Welcome to Medical News Today

Healthline Media, Inc. would like to process and share personal data (e.g., mobile ad id) and data about your use of our site (e.g., content interests) with our third party partners (see a current list) using cookies and similar automatic collection tools in order to a) personalize content and/or offers on our site or other sites, b) communicate with you upon request, and/or c) for additional reasons upon notice and, when applicable, with your consent.

Healthline Media, Inc. is based in and operates this site from the United States. Any data you provide will be primarily stored and processed in the United States, pursuant to the laws of the United States, which may provide lesser privacy protections than European Economic Area countries.

By clicking “accept” below, you acknowledge and grant your consent for these activities unless and until you withdraw your consent using our rights request form. Learn more in our Privacy Policy.

Please accept our privacy terms

We use cookies and similar technologies to improve your browsing experience, personalize content and offers, show targeted ads, analyze traffic, and better understand you. We may share your information with third-party partners for marketing purposes. To learn more and make choices about data use, visit our Advertising Policy and Privacy Policy. By clicking “Accept and Continue” below, (1) you consent to these activities unless and until you withdraw your consent using our rights request form, and (2) you consent to allow your data to be transferred, processed, and stored in the United States.

Get the MNT newsletter

Email an article

You have chosen to share the following article:

How elderberries can help you fight the flu

To proceed, simply complete the form below, and a link to the article will be sent by email on your behalf.Note: Please don't include any URLs in your comments, as they will be removed upon submission.

We do not store details you enter into this form. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

Message sent successfully

Anti-Gout Drug May Decrease Risk For Colorectal Adenoma Progression

Published
Tuesday 9 November 2010 Published Tue 9 Nov 2010

Adapted Media Release

Allopurinol, a relatively inexpensive anti-gout medication that has been on the market for more than 20 years, may have some activity against colorectal adenomas, according to data presented at the Ninth Annual AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held here Nov. 7-10, 2010.

Specifically, the presence of a colorectal tumor tissue biomarker, Ki67, was markedly decreased in the preliminary results of a study of patients with colorectal polyps assigned to take allopurinol.

"Allopurinol has a well-known and good safety profile, and a cost of approximately one euro for one month of treatment," said Andrea De Censi, M.D., director, medical oncology unit, Galliera Hospital, Genoa, and advisor, division of cancer prevention and genetics, EIO, Milan, Italy.

"In the era of very expensive target-therapy in oncology, it is important to search for cheap
agents that could be active in cancer prevention and thus have huge public health implications,"
he said.

In colorectal tumor tissue there are high levels of ROM, or reactive oxygen metabolites.

"These ROMs are thought to be important for development of tumor tissue and carcinogenesis. It is known today that ROMs activate crucial processes involved in cell growth, and in processes that inhibit programmed cell death, one of the main mechanisms involved in cancer control," De Censi said.

Therefore, researchers are testing the effect of ROM scavengers, such as allopurinol, to measure their effects on chemoprevention. According to De Censi, previous research from a large case-control study conducted in Israel showed that patients under chronic allopurinol use for gout had a lower risk for colorectal cancer than a matched control group not using allopurinol.

In the current study, De Censi and colleagues conducted a Phase I/II double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of patients with colorectal adenomatous polyps. Between 2006 and 2010, 73 patients were enrolled and assigned placebo or either a 100-mg or 300-mg dose of allopurinol for four to six weeks prior to removal of polyps.

They collected normal and adenomatous tissue samples and measured changes in the biomarker Ki67 in the normal tissue and the adenomatous tissue to measure the effect of allopurinol. At an interim analysis, conducted in November of 2008, only three mild adverse gastrointestinal events had occurred, confirming the high safety profile of allopurinol.

Tissue analysis in the first 13 patients indicated that levels of Ki67 in normal tissue had doubled in patients taking placebo, but had only increased by 5 percent in patients taking either dose of allopurinol.

"Our findings need to be confirmed on a larger number of subjects. However, if the positive trend noted on Ki67 is confirmed, we will conclude that allopurinol has some activity against colon carcinogenesis that may explain the favorable trend noted in the epidemiological studies. These results will provide the background for a large trial of adenoma recurrence reduction with allopurinol," De Censi said.

2019 Healthline Media UK Ltd. All rights reserved. MNT is the registered trade mark of Healthline Media. Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.